Rick Perry: Obama either ‘inept’ on border security, or has ‘some ulterior motive’

It doesn’t look as if President Obama will accept Texas Governor Rick Perry’s invitation to visit the refugee camps in Texas filled with underage illegal immigrants. That’s no surprise to the Governor, who appeared on ABC’s “This Week” to confront a full spread of Democrat talking points launched by host Martha Raddatz. In case you were wondering, yes, the Democrats and their media pals have figured out a way to blame all this on George Bush.

What’s fascinating about Raddatz’s Party spin is that it completely ignores what the illegals piling up in those camps are actually saying. The talking-point idea that the tide of border crossings will subside now that Obama gave a press conference and said “hey, guys, stop throwing your children across the border” is Mad Hatter-level lunacy. It also has very little to do with Bush-era laws, beyond the way the Obama Administration chooses to interpret them, and has thus far failed to move sufficient security forces to the border to keep the illegals from getting onto American soil. Interviews with the new arrivals make it abundantly clear that they are here to collect on Obama’s amnesty promises, based more on information relayed from friends and relatives in the United States than the fine print on any of the immigration laws Obama has been either ignoring or erasing.

But let’s indulge the Democrat talking points for a moment and ask: If the reason all these illegals instantly become de facto American citizens, immune to deportation proceedings, is because of decade-old laws that tie the Imperial President’s hands (unlike pretty much any other law on the books), then why do Obama and his flacks keep saying we should relax, because they’re all going to be deported? The public “don’t send your kids here” statements Raddatz cites as Obama “leadership” to the bemused Governor Perry include promises that the illegals will be repatriated.

Allow me to quote President Obama directly: “Our message is absolutely don’t send your children unaccompanied on trains or through a bunch of smugglers. That is our direct message to the families of Central America. Do not send your children to the borders. If they do make it, they’ll get sent back. More importantly, they might not make it.”

White House spokespeople mention repatriation every time this topic comes up. The Administration is going through a big pretense of telling the illegal aliens they’re on the honor system to keep in touch with Immigration and Customs Enforcement while their “deportation” cases are processed, before releasing them into cities across the nation. But now the hot new Democrat talking point is that they can’t be deported, and it’s all Bush’s fault? In that case, why has the Administration been constantly lying about deportations for the past few weeks?

Of course, we all know why: so that loyal footsoldiers in the media can write reassuring stories about how the Administration has got this situation under control. Only nativist hysterics would call this human tidal wave an “invasion,” because they’re all going to be “repatriated,” don’t you know! A piece at theL.A. Timesthis morning provides “previously unavailable” evidence that the “permiso” rumors of permanent residence for children and families who make it across the border “have proved increasingly true” under the Obama Administration:

The number of immigrants under 18 who were deported or turned away at ports of entry fell from 8,143 in 2008, the last year of the George W. Bush administration, to 1,669 last year, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data released under a Freedom of Information Act request.

Similarly, about 600 minors were ordered deported each year from nonborder states a decade ago. Ninety-five were deported last year, records show, even as a flood of unaccompanied minors from Central America — five times more than two years earlier — began pouring across the Southwest border.

Democrat spin on Obama’s alleged “leadership” against the immigration crisis is delirious. As Gov. Perry points out, the tangible evidence of the absence of leadership is visible in those refugee camps… provided you can get past the guards to see what’s going on inside. Let me put it this way: what conclusions would a prospective illegal alien draw from watching this exchange between Martha Raddatz and Rick Perry? She echoes a previous guest by whining at him about how “compassion” dictates we throw the borders open to anyone lucky enough to make it across the Rio Grande. The segment begins with a Customs and Border Protection Official soothingly (and incorrectly) promising that the aliens are “family members” who should be welcomed, not “gang members” or “dangerous individuals.” (In truth, quite a few of the “unaccompanied minors” are teenagers sporting gang tattoos.) Raddatz castigates Perry for not accepting the laughable proposition that another 150 Border Patrol agents will be able to shut down a wave of more than 80,000 inbound illegals over the coming year. He’s kept on the defensive throughout the interview.

If you were watching that interview from Guatemala or Honduras, would you not conclude that the odds of staying in the U.S. are heavily in your favor, if you can just get your kids across the border? Democrats are acting as if a few words from Barack Obama will short-circuit the higher reasoning functions of people desperate to leave these squalid Central American nations. His too-little-too-late rhetoric is supposed to hypnotize them into discarding the realities on the ground. Not even American voters are falling for that any more.

It bears repeating that the Administration knew this wave of immigrants was coming, but did absolutely nothing to stop it – not even putting a hundred new Border Patrol agents on station – until the public outcry grew deafening. They’ve been dragged kicking and screaming into the mere pretense of effective action. Among other things, it was entirely predictable that Obama’s amnesty executive orders, and the bipartisan clamor for an amnesty deal in Congress, would provoke a surge of border violations. For that matter, even the “comprehensive immigration reform” caucus has been conceding for years that any improvement in the American economy would likely provoke a resurgence of illegal immigration – and as the latest unemployment reports prove, Obamanomics has been very good at mulching full-time jobs and spewing out part-time positions, accompanied by silly media trumpeting of a “recovery.”

Governor Perry has a lot of guts to voice his suspicions that this was all done on purpose, to create more pressure for further weakening of our immigration laws. (I can’t help noticing that none of the people bleating about Bush-era rules that make unaccompanied minors un-deportable express the slightest interest in tightening those laws. We can give out citizenship retroactively to border violators, but don’t you dare suggest that we should apply “repatriation” procedures retroactively, the way this Administration risibly claims it’s chomping at the bit to do.) Perry’s closing remarks made a hundred times more sense than anything else said on “This Week” about the illegal immigration crisis:

We have been bringing to the attention of President Obama and his administration since 2010, he received a letter from me on the tarmac. He sends — I have to believe that when you do not respond in any way, that you are either inept, or you have some ulterior motive of which you are functioning from.

So the issue is, this president understands now that we have a huge problem on our southern border. We have to deal with it. And I don’t think you’re going to be able to address it until you put the resources there, and that’s boots on the ground. We’re asking for the FAA to allow for drones to be used.

Unless we secure our southern border, this is going to continue to be a massive amount of individuals that are coming to the United States. And, frankly, we don’t have a place to house them as it is. And if we have a major event, a hurricane that comes in to the Gulf Coast, I don’t have a place to be housing people who are displaced.

It’s bizarre to watch the Ruling Class and its media courtiers twist themselves into pretzels to deny the obvious reality that illegal aliens can see with perfect clarity. They can also see that anyone who dares to describe the situation accurately, or call for effective measures that would actually halt the migratory wave, gets torn to shreds on American TV.